Married Name/Maiden Name

oh well

In the case of a woman getting married, can anyone tell me if, when you sign marriage register, you use your own maiden name. If this is the case, what right do you have to then start using your husband's surname as your own? is this just an old accepted "thing" from the days when everyone took husband's name or is there another legal step to be performed? Following on from that, if you then wanted to go back to maiden name after number of years, what steps are needed to do so? tks

its to settle an argument - not a divorce/separation issue

Mr. Incognito

If you want to change your name you need to put her husbands name on the marraige cert and send copies of that to the bank/Revenue etc and they will update their records accordingly. If you don't want to change your name you have no legal obligation to do so.

oh well

yes, but say you did change your name to husband's name and then years later wanted to change back, can you just write to bank/revenue/etc and inform them or do you need to do something more legal?

Victor

Its a lot simpler than that. There is very little legal formality at all.

If Jane Bloggs wants to become Jane Doe, all she has to do is start using the name Jane Doe or Jane Murphy or Mary Murphy or whatever. You can change back when you want.

Problems arise when you want to get recognition, whether from the state of others. To get a passport in anything but your birth cert name means filling out some paperwork with a solicitor and registering it with the courts. Banks, utilities and employers are much more willing to allow a woman to change her name at marriage than any other name change.

haz

Victor wrote: »

To get a passport in anything but your birth cert name means filling out some paperwork with a solicitor and registering it with the courts.

The passport office accepts a marriage and birth cert without any need for a solicitor's intervention.

The really serious issue now is prevention of money-laundering policies that require that whatever name you choose to use is the same in all accounts, with identical spelling. In joint accounts this may even require the same ordering of joint account holders, so that the account names are "computer-identical" rather than common sense identical.

This can be a real pain for anyone with dual-language (including Irish/English) names where even a missing fada is enough to reject a transaction.

In everything else nobody will care what name you use, so long as you only use the one name, even if you invented it (e.g. you could call yourself by a nickname or middle name in all correspondence and bank accounts within Ireland).

SMERSH

As a married man I changed my surname to the wifes on marriage. Under the equality act there is nothing to stop a man from doing so. I obtained a new passport in my new name simply by producing a birth cert and marriage cert. I did need to involve a senior civil servant at the passport office as the junior staff were unaware of the provisions of the equality act.

Once I had the new passport changing things like driving licences etc was simple.

risteardb

SMERSH wrote: »

As a married man I changed my surname to the wifes on marriage. Under the equality act there is nothing to stop a man from doing so. I obtained a new passport in my new name simply by producing a birth cert and marriage cert. I did need to involve a senior civil servant at the passport office as the junior staff were unaware of the provisions of the equality act.

Once I had the new passport changing things like driving licences etc was simple.

I Doubt there would have been any issues in the passport office, obviously once you provided the marriage cert.